


simple harmonic motion

by bookhobbit



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, F/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-12 22:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7951228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing</i><br/><i>Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;</i><br/><i>So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,</i><br/><i>Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.  </i>- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Tales of a Wayside Inn, part 3, section 4.</p><p>Sometimes it's easier to trust strangers with the parts of yourself you've never been able to give to anyone. Sometimes the same strangers keep turning up in your life. It's terribly inconvenient, isn't it, when these two facts get tangled together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	simple harmonic motion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OfShoesAndShips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Moll. I adore you wholly.

Brightwind, of course, is not his real name. As far as he is aware there are no real Romulans named Brightwind. But on Piazzi it's always useful to have an alias, and these Human speeches amuse him.

He's there for...well, he shouldn't be there at all, but court life on Romulus is beginning to sour and he is longing for a change. Piazzi - teeming, filthy, one of the earlier Human outposts and yet brimming with energy despite its age - is quite unlike anything else in either the Federation or on Romulus or, really, anything else in the quadrant. In some ways it's like every other similar city, full of vice and vim, but there's something else about it. Something about the spirit. He thinks it's the way hope hangs in the air, left over from the very first humans who spread out to space.

There are, however, pickpockets. That shouldn't be a surprise, at least, and yet Tomalek finds himself startled by the delicate touch of a hand in his pocket. He turns, grabs, and comes face to...

In fact, no. There's nothing there but empty space and he has to look down a good third of a meter until he can finally be face-to-face, if it doesn't count as face-to-chest, with the thief.

"That," he says with great precision, "Is my watch."

For a moment there's utter stillness. The woman's face doesn't move, and so he takes the opportunity to observe her; she has light brown skin and jet black hair, which would probably be long and shining and glorious if she didn't have it tied back. Her eyes are black too, and examining him with equal intensity. She has a curious little twist of a nose that he quite likes.

"It's terrible anyway," she says finally. "What do you want an old relic like this for? Can't you use your comm? Has it not got the time?"

"I don't want to use my comm. It's a valuable Earth antique, thank you."

"I know," says the woman, a crooked smirk creeping over her face.

He glares. "It was a gift to me from an ambassador and to lose it might mean war."

"Really?"

A pause. "No," he admits, "I bought it at a pawn shop an hour ago and it doesn't keep time. Much good may it do you. Why shouldn't I turn you in to the police, woman?"

"Much good may it do you," she says, smirking again. Her eyes go wide as she says, in an innocent tone, "Watch, officer? I've never even heard of such a thing. What am I watching?"

"Unconvincing."

"I can do better. Try me."

Tomalek's lips purse. "I didn't even like the thing anyway." He releases her hand. "What on earth are you doing in a place like this?"

"Surviving," she says, shrugging. "Where else should I be?"

Tomalek gives her an appraising look, and she bursts into a laugh. "Oh, no. Just because I stole your watch - "

"I just meant that you could buy me a drink in recompense." He doesn't know why he does it and it takes him a second to realize that he has, but he doesn't take it back.

"If it wasn't worth anything then why do I owe you a drink?"

"Then I'll buy you one in order to show you what a grave mistake you made in stealing from me."

"Now, ordinarily I'd have a bit of witty banter to give in response to that, but I never turn down a free drink." The woman puts her hands on her hips. "I'll spare you this once in the interest of good alcohol."

"I never said it would be good," says Tomalek.

"Rich fellow like you? It had better be." She tilts her head. "Do you know a decent bar around here?"

"I'm a tourist. No."

"Well," she says, "Good thing I do. Come on."

"What's your name?" he asks, realizing he still doesn't know. She cocks an eyebrow at him, but he shrugs and says, "I can't keep thinking of you as the woman."

"It's Joan Childermass," she says.

He thinks that's fake - or rather he thinks it's not the name she was born with - but who is he to judge when he's about to taste his own lies on his tongue?

"Tom Brightwind," he says, and likes the way that first name, a childhood nickname of his, sounds. He knows she knows it's not real, just as he knew hers wasn't.

"Well, Tom Brightwind," she says, nodding in a westwardly direction, "Let's go have that drink."

-

Tom's not sure this bar could be classified as decent by any measure he's familiar with. Admittedly, humans do things differently, but this is a wreck.

It's supposed to offer a lovely view of earthrise, but so does practically every bar in Ceres. This despite the fact that, from out here in the asteroid belt, it's really not that great a view.

Tom sighs. "And I'm supposed to buy you expensive alcohol in a place like this?"

"I promise you," says Joan, "They'll have some."

"Hmmm. I'm not sure I want to approach the bar. It looks...strangely sticky."

"Come on." Joan grabs him by the arm and drags him, which makes him splutter in protest. She ignores this completely. Somehow, he's not surprised.

There is, in fact, expensive alcohol. Tom orders their best whisky for both of them; he's never had whisky before, and he finds himself enjoying the taste.

He tells Joan this and she raises an eyebrow. "Never had whisky before? One of the finest beverages in our solar system."

"I haven't drank much in your solar system before."

"At all?"

"I've had a few of your wines and your beers, that's all. None of it remotely compares."

Joan raises her eyebrows practically up to her hairline. "That's it. I'm ordering. Move aside, Prince Shiny, I'm in charge now."

"Prince _what_?"

She ignores him. "Oi! You, what rums have you got?"

There follows a bewildering discussion and Joan setting up some sort of tasting platter - or, well, drinking platter, he supposes, with the aforesaid rum and a variety of other things. He catches things called absinthe, araq, vodka, and tequila, and he's not sure that's all. Most of these are clear, which he finds extremely suspicious.

"Drinking tour of Earth," she says, and he shrugs.

Because there's entirely too much alcohol here for an empty stomach, he orders a plate of nibbly things, which Joan immediately starts stealing, so he gets another and before he knows, they're deep in conversation of the relative merits of kanar versus Romulan ale. Or perhaps argument would be better.

"Which," she says, "Shouldn't be called an ale."

"It's your bloody translation machines. Not our fault."

"Hmmm. What do you make it from?"

"A grain, quite like you do, although ours doesn't foam, as you've no doubt seen."

Joan grins. "Oh, I've seen. How d'you get a beer that strong?"

"It's not really a beer, as you said. But the fermentation process is quite different and so is the structure - "

"Hence the blue."

"I have no idea why yours is amber. All proper grain should be blue."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"You've no idea of proper plant life."

"I'll have you know that I'm a gardener."

They argue for a while until three drinks on. "Vulcans are supposed to be immune to alcohol," she tells him, "Why aren't you?"

"I'm _not_ a Vulcan, thank you."

"I do have eyes. But don't you have the same anatomy, basically?"

"Yes, well - " He looks around, just a bit more off guard than he should be. "Well, I'm not completely Romulan."

She raises her eyebrows. "What are you?"

"That's a rude question," he says, and drinks another one of the drinks in front of him.

Joan nods as if she accepts the reprimand, which surprises him, but then steals his rum. He grumbles and drinks her araq and they squabble over drinks for the next fifteen minutes.

Tom knows where this leads. He's known all along where it could lead, if she's willing.

And, sure enough, they end up staggering back to her place. Joan's flat, like most asteroid colony living spaces, is a tiny square with barely enough room for two people. A room more than a house, really. The bed is hooked high on the wall, with a ladder up to it. He regards it with dismay. He should have brought her back to a hotel. Even luxury here isn't very impressive, but it's better than a ladder bed.

He turns and finds her watching him with something between amusement and interest.

"Well?" he says. "What do you want?"

She kisses him roughly and he sighs, brings his hands up to her cheeks.

"Are you sure - " he begins.

"We shouldn't. Had too much to drink."

That brings a strange sense of relief, though he's just off his head enough not to question it. "All right."

She kisses him again with a pulling-away reluctance. "Bed."

"But you just said - "

"Not that. Just sleep."

"I don't sleep with people. It's not in my nature."

"Well, then, you can take the floor. Or if you like you can come up here and we can kiss."

Tom considers this fuzzily. The thought sounds appealing, so he wanders after her, barely making it up the ladder.

"This bed is horrible," he announces, flopping onto it. "You should come to mine."

"You have a hotel?"

"No, no, I was going to get one after - after whatever happened. Mine on Romulus."

"Bit far to go to sleep."

"Yes," Tom admits. He reaches out a hand to trail it along her face, tucking a stray strand behind her ear. "Still."

"You," she says, with deliberate precision that's not at all convincing, "Are drunk."

"So are you," he says, and begins to fall asleep without quite realizing it's happening.

He wakes up three hours later with a terrible stomachache and silently curses the liquors of Earth. Then, after some consideration, he does it out loud.

"Hangover?" says Joan sleepily from beside him.

"Ugh," says Tom. "Is that what you call it? My stomach wants to exit my body without regard for what obstacles might be in the way."

"Well, that's not what I usually get," she says, sounding a bit more awake. "Not exactly _not_ usual, but with me it's a headache."

"Ugh," says Tom again.

"I'll be back. Got to do something to stop your moaning." She crawls nimbly down from the horrible bed and brings back a glass full of....something.

"It's mint water," she says. "I looked and you can drink it. It'll settle your stomach."

"Ugh."

"Stop that. You're nesh, that's what you are."

He takes the glass and drinks it, groaning all the while. She pokes him until he settles and then curls up beside him, flinging one arm over his chest.

He could ask her to move. He could ask her to stop. He doesn't need to endure this...cuddling. He's never been a cuddler.

Instead, he turns towards her and puts an arm around her too. He can't remember the last time he slept in a bed with someone without the accompanying implications. In a way it feels more like being naked than being naked does anymore.

The mint does help; his stomach settles quicker than he'd have expected, or at least enough to be bearable.

"Do you have to go in the morning?" she asks, sounding as if she's not much interested in the answer, but also as if the nonchalance isn't quite uncrackable.

"I could stay today," he says, suspecting he sounds much the same. "Do you have to work?"

"That's the nice thing about being a pickpocket. You set your own hours."

And not long after that he drifts back off to sleep.

-

The next morning he makes her breakfast, tutting over the dismal array of food in her tiny refrigerator. She comes up behind him and kisses what she can reach - his back, more or less, because she's amusingly small - and that distracts him and the eggs nearly burn, but they still don't sleep together. He keeps waiting, tense, for her to ask. Or to do something with her hands or face that indicates she's disappointed.

But she doesn't. He pulls her hair out of its braid and brushes it, which is extremely satisfying, and she makes him tea, which he complains about. They spend lazy hours watching holovids about Romulus, which Tom points out the inaccuracies in.

"Never had a more educational time with a man," she says. "There was a woman once who was a schoolteacher, and I'd put her a bit above for learning because she was a bit more general, but still, I'm impressed, for twelve hours."

"I bet I can do better."

"I bet you can't."

"You're a completely exasperating woman. Where is it that you're from?"

She gestures lazily and pulls up the lists. "Yorkshire, it's called. Let me show you."

Without asking, he gets up into her bed again that night. Without asking, she pokes and prods him until her arms are wrapped around his back and their legs are tangled.

He has to admit that the contact is...nice. He's never really been one for casual touch. From the way she moves, he doesn't think she has ever either. It's odd, this tiny bit of trust, and he thinks it's happening because they're both secretly convinced they'll never see each other again and they needed something that only a stranger can provide.

"Reman," he says, twenty minutes later when her breathing's evened out. He thinks she's asleep, so it's in the nature of a confession to the unconscious. If they're doing the catharsis with a stranger thing, he might as well go all the way.

Unfortunately, he's miscalculated. She says, "What?" with her voice full of sleep.

Well, might as well go with it now. "You asked before... I'm Reman. Half."

"Oh," she says, and lifts her head up. "Never heard of them."

"Most people haven't. They were the ones on the planet when the Romulans came. Most of them are working in horrible conditions now."

For a long while Joan is silent. Then she says, "I won't tell you I'm sorry because I'm sure you know enough about that. But. If it's too heavy I'm here. I don't suppose you've told many people about it."

The offer shouldn't be as tempting as it is, but he can feel the words scraping up the back of his throat, because she's right. He's told one person and that was - well. That was a mistake, as the scars still faintly visible around his neck in the right light will show.

"I got myself out," he begins.

He tells her things he shouldn't have told anyone, that he never has told anyone. About not being fully Romulan. About a life he barely remembers in labor camps, struggling to survive, about escaping and scrubbing every trace out of his face and voice and manner.

She tells him, in return, about her own struggles. About the three-way pull of identity, because, she says, she's Lebanese-British (two categories he has personally never heard of, but which he learns are subgroups of Human) and she's Piazzian too and there's no easy way of reconciling all three pieces. She talks to him in Earth languages he's never heard, and he dredges up the few phrases of Reman he remembers.

And they argue, of course, until the sun comes up.

He leaves the next morning, catching the next shuttle out to the far reaches of this solar system. He'll find a ship that'll take him out to the neutral zone, and from there he can pick up transport quite easily. There are always cruisers to carry home anyone with enough credits or latinum, no matter where home is.

The shuttle is small and he is crowded with far too unpleasant bits of humanity, so he thinks about their nights together instead. Odd - Tom regards sex more or less as a tool, so it's not as though he's shy, but somehow he hadn't wanted that with her. Not that she wasn't attractive, but... Something else.

It shouldn't have happened. There's no reason for it to happen. There's nothing about either of them that suggests it would. But, he thinks, they recognize something in each other that they don't see often. A sense of motion stilled, of wings poised for flight, of claws sheathed but ready to come out at any time.

They are the same, he thinks, underneath all the trappings. What she chooses to project is practicality, a sort of cutthroat indifference wrapped in plain black cloth. He's always been one for ostentatious. Perhaps that is an irreconcilable difference. 

Well, he thinks, it's not like they'll see each other again.

-

Always a bit dull, this parade. Tom sips his ale and leans back, watching as they march by. He's always found slavery, even for prisoners of war, revolting. But General Areinnye will insist on parading her victories about, even though she's no longer truly a warrior, only a politician.

He glances down at himself and makes a rueful face. All trace of Reman ancestry is absent from him - careful surgery saw to what nature had not. All that's left are powers that he's well capable of keeping under control.

Still... As much as he's never been particularly interested in morality, some things even he can't stomach.

A flash of shining black hair catches his eye and he turns his head towards it, sharp. It reminds him of...

Yes. There's a small brown-and-black figure marching along in the parade. For sale, by the look of things, with her arms in cuffs.

For a moment he stops cold, frozen. Then he manages to get himself together again and rises slowly, casually, and saunters over towards the line.

"Colonel Tomalak," says General Areinnye. "I thought you didn't care for the parade?"

"I've seen something I like," he say, letting his eyes stay cool. It's a struggle to keep the flicker out of them. There's a reason that he left the Tal Shiar and no matter how much Areinnye disagrees with that decision she shouldn't be inflicting the title on him anymore.

"Well, go on then." She stops the parade with a finger, and Brightwind, deliberately keeping his hands steady, walks over to Joan.

Her black eyes are full of a bitter fire, but when she sees them he catches the split second of hope.

He reaches out, traces her chin with one finger. Her breath comes in sharp and the hate is back, but he pays it no mind for now, though a hollow piece of him withdraws from it after the memory their last touch.

"I'll buy this one," he says, drawing a few slips of latinum out of his pocket. "Here."

"Will you need the cuffs?"

Tom resists the urge to swallow the bitterness in his throat. "No."

Subsequently released, he grabs her by the arm and drags her to the nearest transporter station - just a few minutes away, here where everyone is obscenely rich and politically important - with her struggling all the while.

He can't say anything to soothe her until he punches in the coordinates for his house and the shimmer into being there.

"You complete _bastard_ ," she begins.

He lets her arm go. "Was I supposed to let you languish there? I've bought you your freedom, woman. If you don't want to accept it I'll go and get my money back."

She gapes for a moment, amusingly like a fish, and then stalks off the transporter pad. "You could have said!" she yells over her shoulder.

"No I couldn't have. Not in public. Where are you going, you ridiculous creature?"

"I'm finding your replicator. I'm starved."

"Yes, I expect you are, but the kitchen is down the other hall."

Joan stops abruptly, turns, and glares at him. "Arse," she says.

He opens his mouth to ask, 'what, for giving you directions?' when he realizes she's scared. Of him, still. That's why she's so snappish; she's trying to regain control of the situation.

Tom softens a bit and adjusts his expectations. "Come on, I'll get you something. It's a bit complex anyway - I expect you don't have similar things in Piazzi. Federation technology..."

"I'm sure I couldn't operate your Romulan junk," she says, and looks almost glad to have something legitimate to be angry about.

They find their way to the kitchen. Despite the replicator he still maintains one, because he likes being able to cook. It gives him a pleasing sense of control over his own life which he generally lacks. So he cooks for her, and she grumbles and groans when it takes more than ten minutes, but he gives her a cup of tea in the meantime.

"I needed this," she says, sipping at it with a sigh. She doesn't say thank you, but then, when have either of them.

Joan relaxes by degrees during the meal. She reminds him of nothing so much as a wild fox: cautious and wary with an edge which rather suggests that she might bite.

Without asking, she clears the dishes away after they eat. He wonders whether, perhaps, this is an attempt not to be in debt. He wants to tell her that it's not like that - that he'd never - but he knows she wouldn't trust him anymore than he'd trust her.

They sit in silence with coffee - another Terran habit he's come to rather enjoy - until he says, "Shall we go to the sitting room?"

She shrugs.

Because it's a grand house, Tom has three separate rooms dedicated to the reception of company. One is done in a very traditional black-and-silver scheme, good for receiving dignitaries - not that he sees many of those anymore. A second is in bold red and blue, contemporary yet tasteful, for informal occasions. A third is a very daring pastel affair where he primarily entertains the artistic types he's accumulated over the years.

After a moment's thought, he takes her to none of these. Instead he goes to his own living room, which is comfortable and warm and done in greens and browns with flashes of pink. These aren't fashionable colours anywhere on Romulus right now, but they're among his favorites. There's a floral wallpaper that he picked up from Bajor which looks nothing at all like any of the popular geometric patterns here at the moment. There are three chairs and a couch, all splitting but too comfortable to replace. There's a small replicator on which he orders snacks. And, finally, there's a bookshelf. He keeps all _his_ books, the ones he has for reading and rereading and not just for keeping up his image, here.

Joan takes it all in with perfect silence. Her shoeless feet - he hadn't noticed until just now that they were only wrapped and that the toes stuck out - dig deep into the soft carpet, and she trails a hand along the bookcase. She looks at the huge desk wedged in the corner where he sits to do work he doesn't want to be disturbed at. She turns and regards the chairs, and the fresh flowers on the little table.

"Not, somehow, what I think of when I see you," she says finally.

"What do you think of," he says, his voice feeling rusty although it's only been a few minutes since he's spoken, "When you see me?"

"Grandeur." She shrugs. "Expect you do that on purpose. I know your sort."

"What is my sort?" He sits down on the couch, hoping to spread his legs out, knowing she probably won't want to sit beside him.

"The sort that always knows how they look, and pays careful mind to how it hits people." To his shock, she sits down beside him, stretching her short legs out on the carpet and draping her arms over the back. Deliberately taking up space. She's one to talk about paying mind to looks, and to their impact.

Tom doesn't say anything.

Joan fills the silence eventually. She says, "Why did you do it?"

For a moment, just for a moment, he considers playing dumb. But he knows better than that.

"It wasn't for you. This entire business makes me sick. Selling and buying people - I'd like to think we've moved beyond that as a society, but then, the government and the military have never been the best of Romulus. I should know."

He can't tell if she believes him. She says, "What is the best of Romulus?"

He turns to look at her. Her dark eyes are thoughtful, less challenging than usual.

"I don't know," he says. "I don't think I've seen it."

"Is that why you travel?"

"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm looking for another home."

"Any luck yet?"

He shrugs.

"You didn't save any of the others," says Joan.

"What?"

"The others. You said it was because it made you sick, but it was me you picked."

Their eyes meet again, but he can't maintain his gaze, much to his own shame. Decades in the highest organization on the planet and one small Human woman can get to him like this.

"It's easier to feel sorry for faces you know, that's all," he says. "Can't save everyone. Don't think I harbor some sort of sentiment. I'm not the type to get attached from one night. Two nights."

Joan looks at him for a very long moment, her eyes searching. He holds her gaze this time, mostly out of pride, and tries not to show her the truth: that she owns a small part of him which he has never fully trusted to anyone else, and he desperately didn't want to see that pass into the hands of someone else. He owes her.

Then she grabs him by the collar, drags him down, and kisses him.

He splutters for a moment, and flails, which isn't a very good showing for someone who has kissed as many people as he has.

When she releases him, after a long moment, he says, "That's not why."

"I know," she says. "This is for me."

And there's really nothing he can say to that. He lets her lead, putting his hands on her waist as she pushes him over on the couch and climbs on top of him.

For a while they lose themselves in kissing. He forgets himself and lets his hands drift upwards to undo her braid. He runs his hands through the long black hair, marveling at it softness, particularly in contrast to everything else about her. Odd how familiar that hair is after two nights.

They're halfway to undressed, Joan's jumpsuit falling off her shoulders and his overshirt vanished somewhere he doesn't care to track, and she's running a hand across his collarbones with an expression of fascination that makes his heart pound, when he says, "Do we have to - "

She stops, and looks at him. "Have to what?"

He doesn't know why he said it. He really doesn't. It's just that this stage, this part, is always something of artifice for him. Something that he does, not because he wants to, but because it's expected.

It doesn't feel like a night for expected. It doesn't feel like a night for artifice. There's something between them now that he doesn't want to spoil by pretending.

"Do anything else," he says, finally, aware that it sounds childish. She doesn't make fun of him, though; she just settles back a bit, giving him space to get up if he wants.

But he doesn't, really; he just wants this and only this.

"Makes no nevermind to me," says Joan. "I can take or leave the entire business. Would you rather I stop?"

"No," he says, quietly. "Just stay here, like this. As we are."

Joan smirks and shifts so that she's pressed against him again, her face just a few inches from his.

"I can do that," she says.

-

"Why'd you quit the Tal Shair?" she asks later that evening, idly running her fingers up and down his ribs. The question is out of nowhere, but that's not unusual for them, it seems.

"Uniforms were awful," he says. 

She laughs. "Are they those terrible grey square ones?"

"That's the one. I have an excellent figure, but even I can't carry it off. Some of the people wearing one - well, you wouldn't believe. Like blocks with heads on the top."

"Mm. Always seemed impractical to me."

"Terribly. I'm all for ceremony, but you can hardly move. Of course we take pains to have a rather better field uniform but - " he shrugs - "Still not on my level. How do you know I quit?"

"I have got a pair of eyes in my head. She called you colonel, that woman. But you're clearly not a bigshot anymore."

"Maybe they fired me."

"I have a feeling that's not easy to do."

Tom smirks. "Yes, I do have a way of making life into a hellish prison for my enemies."

"I'll bet," she says, and doesn't ask what there real reason he left is. Tom thinks she understands what he didn't say. Perhaps she sensed the faint tenseness that even he can't quite stop any time someone asks.

Well. He did say this was not a night for the expected, wasn't it. But he'd thought this was a night for lies, and here they are.

But then, he wonders, does it count as a lie if the other person knows and accepts your reasons?

"Kiss me," Joan says, tugging impatiently at his hair.

"I can do that," he says.

-

Both of them know she'll leave again. It's not just past experience; this isn't her home.

"Getting you back into the Federation might prove a bit tricky in these rather touchy times," he says, "But I do have a few friends."

"You got yourself into the Federation."

"I said I had friends."

She hmm-s. "And how do I get to these friends?"

"I'll get you to the spaceport."

Despite everything, Joan does stay three weeks. She says it's to resupply, which he assumes means to eat his food, but she comes and finds him in his sitting room most days he's there. She buries her feet in the soft carpet - though he's replicated her clothes she's resisted shoes - and reads his books and ignores him except when he speaks.

When he does speak, they argue. Tom finds himself enjoying the challenge.

It feels oddly permanent at the time; he settles into a routine of waking up and fixing a coffee for when she drags herself out of bed, which is generally later. Sometimes he'll go out to a party - a rare activity now that he's a bit of an exile - and wake up past fourteen hundred, bleary-eyed and full of hate for the entire world. When he does, he always finds coffee there.

It's really quite alarmingly like a routine. Some small part of him would like it to go on.

That's a terrifying thought; she already knows, by virtue of inconvenient chance, more about him than she really should.

He's not supposed to enjoy their quiet mealtimes, nor should he be glad to be cooking for more than one. He's a loner. At least these days, anyway.

He tries not to regret it when she leaves, and makes a point of not remember where she'd said she was from.

It's not as though he's going to visit there, after all.

-

Tom's never been to Earth before, really. The attractions are minimal; the outer colonies have everything except the geography, and what's the point? He's seen a mountain.

The architecture, though, isn't bad. He looks around. This place is called York, apparently, and it's got some sort of house of worship with impressive stonework.

Tom doesn't know what he's looking for here. Does he think he'll find some part of her heart hidden in the mouth of a gargoyle, something that will teach him how to love her? Teach him how to get her to stay, or how to make himself settle?

He walks around the churchyard for a while, examining the structures without really seeing them. He doesn't know what he -

Tom comes to a screeching halt. Joan is standing there, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"What are you doing here," he says.

She shrugs and leans against a stone wall, too casually, he thinks. She looks younger than her years, half-formed, against the green background of this world. "Visiting my hometown. That a crime?"

"I don't know. Depends on what you do there."

"I think the better question is what you're doing," says Joan. "This ain't your place, anymore than yours was mine."

"I thought Piazzi was your place."

"Piazzi is where I work. This is where my people are from, at least partly. Couple of hundred years some of us go back in these parts."

Tom says, "Hm. Perhaps I wanted to see Earth."

"Lot of earth to see that's not this," she says.

There's silence. Then, "Were you expecting to find me?"

He says, "No. I was expecting to find some sort of impression. A footprint it had left on you."

Their eyes meet and she smiles wearily. "I saw yours, that's for sure."

"Yes, I'm afraid Romulus can be seen on me from a mile off. No matter what you do." He straightens his sleeves, though they're really not wrinkled.

"Maybe it's not so bad. You seemed to have turned out well enough."

He laughs, a little hollowly. "Not many people would agree with that."

She shrugs. Tom remembers when he had asked what she was doing in Piazzi, she had said, 'where else should I be?' He knows now that the answer is here. There's something about her that fits in with this place, somehow. An echo of the bare stone in the set of her shoulders.

"How long are you staying?" he asks.

"Until I get restless. Got a flat, if you want to see."

The invitation could be subtler, but he's currently in no mood to complain.

-

It's a better one this time; in this corner of Earth which is not too densely populated, small flats are still a couple of rooms. She has a proper bed, he observes; the door to the room is open and he can see the bottom of it peeking out. There's a kitchen, too, a proper one.

"Nicer," he says in a noncommittal voice. "Still not as good as I could have bought."

"Yes, and a Romulan strolling into an Earth hotel and asking for a booking isn't going to get you any crosswise looks. How far are we from war, Tom?"

Tom blows out his breath and collapses on the couch. "Probably not as far as even you think. I've been keeping an eye on things. You underestimate the quality my Vulcan accent, however."

Joan snorts and sits down, making a face. "You've got the wrong hairstyle for a Vulcan."

"Got the wrong hairstyle for a Romulan," says Tom. "At least in the conception of the average human. Horrible boxy things, aren't they? Why is everything a box? Mine is much better."

"I'll grant you that it's more elegant. Still, I don't think you'll be very welcome here. Not for what you might call long term. I'll put you up if you want, as long as you want, god knows I owe you that, but - "

"Run away with me," he says abruptly.

She raises an eyebrow sharply. Talking of Vulcans, he thinks. "Well?" he says aloud. "Yes or no?"

"Why would I run away with you?"

"Because the war is going to come. Because it's going to be awful. We could go to the neutral zone and find an uninhabited planet with a few replicators and avoid it all. It's very tedious, war. Awful food. Bad sleep." Tom turns to face her, and without quite realizing he's done so, grabs her hand.

"You hardly know me."

 _You know me better than anyone has in years and I think that's mutual, too._ "We could change that."

She stares at him. "What's got into you?"

He gives her a tiny twisted smile. Answers he could give hover at the tip of his tongue. _I don't know. I'm tired of fighting. Or maybe it's just you._

"Foolishness, I suppose," he says.

She seems to unbend. "Said I'd put you up, didn't I? Let's have dinner."

-

It ends in the way that is rapidly becoming a pattern with them: kissing and sleeping in the same bed, one of them in the other's arms. He whispers "you're beautiful" in her ear for the first time.

She smacks him on the arm. "Don't go around with that, you. I know what I look like."

"I'm not teasing."

She twist and glares at him, as if examining his motives, and he presses a kiss to her lips, softer and gentler than he'd have expected of himself.

She sighs, and brings her hands up to his face.

It's a month and a half before Tom leaves.The flat really is tiny, so he takes to walking in the park, wearing a strange hooded garment he borrows from Joan. It covers his hair and ears and nobody gives him a second look after that, despite the eyebrows. He can feel tension brewing in himself, and doesn't say a word.

But one day he comes back into the flat and, without a word, beings to pack his meager things.

Joan watches him for a while. "Were you planning on telling me?" she says.

"I thought you could deduce it from my activities."

"Would have been nice to be told."

"Are you trying to get me to stay? Miss me that much, will you?"

"Don't get to full of yourself, Prince Shiny." She watches him toss a few more things into his duffle bag. "Was wondering why you were restless, though."

"This isn't my place. And it isn't right, us. We're not supposed to be together."

"I don't know where you get your supposed-tos from."

"You were supposed to be a stranger," says Tom, pausing to look up at her. "I was never supposed to see you again. Catharsis, I said. No risk, I said."

"There's risk to everything."

"You weren't supposed to come back!"

"What was I, a trash bin for your feelings?"

"No!" says Tom. "That's the whole point! It's all wrong because you weren't supposed to mean anything!"

In the pause that follows, he finishes his packing. She stares at him for a long while, and then says, "If that's the way you feel about it."

"I have no recourse. You won't run away with me, remember?"

Joan gives him a funny, pained, twisted little smile. "Sure that's what I said?"

Tom wonders about the magnitude of the mistake he's just made. In a life full of them, he has a fine tuned system for calculation. He thinks this was at least a five on a scale of ten, with potential for a rise.

"I thought," he begins.

"Well, you didn't do it very well," says Joan. "Your packing's all done. Maybe you'd better go."

"Maybe I better had," Tom says, and walks out the door, knowing he'll never see her again.

-

For six months, he forgets everything.

The first month he spends at more parties than he's been to in the past year. The second month he spends in his library. The third month he remembers her sitting in his library, and vacates it for his formal sitting room, bringing the books he needs in there. The fourth month he decides this is stupid and retreats back to his library, resuming furious notes on the nature of wheat ale. The fifth and six months are spent working in his garden because he realizes one day that he's neglected it almost entirely and there's a fearful amount of work to be done.

Throughout this process he very carefully does not point out to himself that none of this is really, properly, forgetting.

At the beginning of the seventh month he's just come in from the garden and is drinking cold water, reflecting smugly on the number of weeds he's just pulled and how he is the king of his own domain, when he hears the transporter chime softly.

Suddenly, intensely on edge, he grabs a disruptor from the top of the replicator - he keeps one in every room - and creeps slowly into the reception area.

Sure enough, the transporter is blinking softly. Someone's trying to come in. Frowning, he points the disruptor towards the pad and allows the transfer.

In a couple of seconds, Joan is standing there.

She blinks at him, and says, tapping her foot, "Took you long enough."

"What the _hell_ ," he begins.

Joan smirks. "Finally managed to catch you off guard, did I?"

"What are you doing in my house? This is my house! You can't get in here without authorization! How did you get through the neutral zone?"

She steps, neatly, off the transporter pad, with a smug air he's sure he's not imagining. "I have my ways."

"You can't just - "

"You promised we'd be running, Prince Shiny," she says, drawing out every word. "You planning on living up to that, or not?"

For an instant, Tom is caught. There's two futures poised to split here, and if he doesn't find the right words, he knows the wrong one will chase him down. It would be so, so easy to screw this up again.

"You'll have to give me some time to plot," he says, "I'm afraid I cancelled my other plans when you kicked me out of your house."

And for another instant she looks tense, and then she shakes her head. "It was you doing the running, if I remember. I can wait. I need something to eat. Smuggled myself here, didn't I, and had to live off scraps from the replicators at night."

"I don't even want to know. You're completely incorrigible."

"Like you haven't done worse things."

"You know nothing about me," he says, haughtily.

She smiles, and looks at him with her eyes full of promises. "I could find out," she says.

He takes her hand, and they go to the kitchen.

It feels like new beginnings.


End file.
